The Government of Ethiopia, as part of the Growth and Transformation Plan and Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy, launched the National Biogas Programme Ethiopia to promote the uptake of domestic biogas, and to develop and disseminate a commercially viable market biogas sector in the country. The goal of the programme is to improve health, livelihood and quality of life of rural households through the exploita-tion of market and non-market benefits of domestic biogas.
The programme comprises eight major components: promotion and marketing, training, quality manage-ment, research and developmanage-ment, monitoring and evaluation, institutional support, extension, and gender mainstreaming. The first phase of the programme (2008–2012) involved 5,000 biogas plants of 4, 6, 8 and 10 m3 in 18 selected districts (Woredas) in the regional states of Tigray; Amhara; Oromiya; and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples.
The biogas plants generate sufficient energy for household consumption, in some cases much beyond de-mand. The excess energy generated was used to cover the energy demand of the nearby communities and institutions, including schools and health centres. By supplying energy at affordable prices, biogas plants con-tributed to reducing health problems associated with smoke from fuel and cow dung burning, thereby re-ducing household health expenditures. At the same time, it has reduced the time women and children spend on collecting fuel wood from long distances. The National Biogas Programme implementation package also includes training on biogas maintenance, installation, and a credit association. The programme provided more jobs for technical and vocation training graduates, as well as for construction cooperatives and small and medium-sized enterprises.
By substituting commercial fertilizers (inorganic) by bio slurry (organic matter), the project saved farmers an estimated BR 4,772,130 (household saving of BR 950) through fertilizer substitution. The bio slurry also im-proved soil conditions and maintained sustainable soil fertility by increasing moisture retention capacity and levels of other soil nutrient elements that cannot be substituted by commercial fertilizer.
By replacing biogas for wood and charcoal, the project saved standing forest stocks of 35.9 tons and 20.8 tons from being harvested for woodfuel and charcoal, respectively. This is estimated to offset emission of 65.7 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) from direct wood burning or 53.4 tons CO2e from charcoal burning. Ad-ditionally, replacing the fossil fuel energy sources such as kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas by biogas has resulted in a modest emission reduction of 13.5 and 40.5 tons CO2e, respectively.
Source: ECA, 2014a.
Bujagali hydroelectric power plant, financed through public-private partnerships in Uganda
National biogas programme in Ethiopia
National railway and bus rapid projects in Ethiopia
Energy efficiency and demand side manage-ment programme in South Africa
Multi-functional platforms for local agro pro-cessing in Burkina Faso and Mali
Challenges and opportunities
Challenges
The low penetration of inclusive green growth principles and practices in the energy sector is influenced by a number of challenges, including:
Low investment in the sector,owing to per-ceived risks and low economies of scale, as individual countries do not offer a significant market for investors. Investment in the ener-gy sector has been slow and this is associ-ated with high political and market risk for investors, as well as low tariffs. Markets will also remain small, unless the economies of scale of regional cooperation are exploited.
High upfront costs of inclusive green growth-related technologies and inade-quate capacity for propagating inclusive green growth technologies and practices:
Africa is not the source of most of the clean energy technologies that are being de-ployed. And energy industries (apart from national utilities) are informal, small and can-not provide credible services. Although the global renewable energy prices have come down, the challenge is that most of the tech-nologies are imported, thus resulting in high costs.
Dependence on donor support for projects, hence compromising on sustainability: Most of the previous renewable energy projects that benefitted from donor support tended to collapse soon after the support was with-drawn, thus limiting sustainability and the opportunity to build on results.
Inadequate capacity to promote inclusive green growth practices: The capacity of African countries to support inclusive green growth in the energy sector is limited. For example, capacity is inadequate for policy and strategy formulation, development of bankable projects, engagement with pottial financiers, for technology absorption, en-trepreneurship and even for credible instal-lation and maintenance of new technology systems.
Opportunities
The emergence of new policies and strat-egies for promotion of renewable energy.
South Africa, for example, under compet-itive bidding, has attracted investment of nearly 4GW of renewable energy. Kenya in-troduced a feed-in tariff on electricity from wind, biomass and small hydropower in 2008, and extended the policy in 2010 to in-clude geothermal, biogas and solar energy resource-generated electricity. The revised renewable energy feed-in tariffs (REFIT) pol-icy in 2012 has resulted in increased inter-est in renewable energy invinter-estment in the country.
Energy sector reforms, including liberaliza-tion of the energy sector, to broaden the involvement of independent energy or elec-tricity regulators: Namibia and South Africa have part of their electricity distribution un-der regional electricity distributors and mu-nicipalities respectively (World Bank, 2007).
Other forms of reforms include removal of fossil fuel subsidies and creating cost-reflec-tive tariffs.
Business and energy delivery models for clean energy, such as D-light’s range of so-lar-powered systems.
Technology development to cut down costs and promote clean resource efficiency.
Innovative and new financing models,such as the Green Climate Fund,to support inclu-sive green growth in the energy sector.
Establishment of new sustainable energy regional centres, such as the East African Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and the South African Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.
Regional cooperation in energy, through regional power pools and electricity regula-tors.
International cooperation for financial and technical support, and tapping into initi-atives such as the Africa-European Union Energy Partnership; the Lighting Africa pro-gramme of the International Finance Cor-poration and World Bank; Power Africa, a multi-stakeholder partnership among the Governments of the United States of Amer-ica, the United Republic of Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia, the pri-vate sectors of Africa and the United States, and AfDB; the Global Alliance for Clean Cook and the Global Liquefied Petroleum Gas Partnership.
Conclusion and policy recommendations
Despite the abundance of energy resources, Africa is still facing an energy crisis. The existing production capacity has not met the growing energy demand to power and grow the econo-my, drive local development and tackle poverty.
The high cost of electricity generation emanating
from the high dependence on fossil fuels for elec-tricity generation, poor energy infrastructure and low investments in the sector, among others, is af-fecting various facets of economic and social de-velopment. Low energy supply and consumption in key sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and industry, is affecting outputs and growth. The unmet demand for energy has further resulted in high dependence on unsustainably harvested traditional biomass energy in the form of charcoal and firewood as cooking fuels, and led to environ-mental and health problems. Africa’s current en-ergy development and deployment approaches have, therefore, not delivered the desired level of energy services and security, and requires a re-think.
The following all suggest a high potential for in-clusive green growth-related practices in the sec-tor: current generation levels, policy initiatives and reforms in improving energy efficiency; de-ployment of renewable energy; reducing energy intensity; increasing energy access; and social, environmental and cross-cutting and cross-sec-toral considerations. While a number of challeng-es - such as low invchalleng-estments, high upfront costs and low economies of scale - still need to be met, opportunities abound. In particular, Africa’s re-newable energy potential presents prospects for meeting energy-related challenges, creating jobs and enhancing human welfare. International and regional cooperation, as well as technology devel-opment and transfer, also present opportunities Africa could tap into to enhance the application and realization of inclusive green growth in the energy sector.
The following policy recommendations are in-tended to scale up inclusive green growth in the energy sector of Africa.
Countries should:
Unlock the full potential for inclusive green growth in the energy sector. In order to fully realize the inclusive green growth potential
in the sector, the policy process should start by identifying opportunities in the broad context of inclusive green growth objectives.
Ensure that the energy reforms being intro-duced benefit all. While policy reforms need to attract and ensure returns on investments, the extent to which they address the energy needs of the whole country, including the energy poor, is crucial.
Ensure that policies aimed at attracting in-vestments are evidence-based, and take into account all policy options, the country’s overall development strategy and energy re-source potentials. This would help speed up and deepen inclusive green growth in the energy sector.
Address the issue of low economies of scale and investments, national energy strategies;
and as far as possible, closely align these
with regional and continental regional inte-gration initiatives.
Strategize to benefit optimally from the fi-nancial, technological and capacity develop-ment resources offered by global initiatives.
Enhance capacities to develop domestic in-novation and local manufacturing of tech-nologies. This requires coordinated support from the private sector, government and do-nor and international partners.
Track successes and failures by putting in place a robust framework for measuring pro-gress against agreed indicators.
6. Industry
Africa’s natural resource endowment can propel a commodity-based industrialization and eco-nomic structural transformation that could shift the sectoral composition in favour of high-pro-ductivity activities, especially manufacturing and modern services (ECA, 2013a&b). Such industri-alization can be oriented to promote inclusive green growth that fosters resource use efficiency and ecosystem integrity, create jobs, generate in-come and wealth, lift millions out of poverty and improve human welfare.
The region has about 12 per cent of the world’s oil reserves,42 per cent of its gold reserves, 80 to 90 per cent of its chromium and platinum group metals, and 60 per cent of its agricultural land and vast forest and timber resources (ECA, 2014). The non-oil resource-rich economies, on the other hand, were principally driven by mineral and met-al commodities, such as gold, copper, platinum, manganese and uranium.
There is evidence of a correlation between in-dustrialization (manufacturing value added) and economic growth that increases productivity, generates income, reduces poverty and provides opportunities for social inclusion. Manufacturing value added also brings about productive em-ployment (more than agriculture) and improves not only the number of jobs but also their quality in all countries (UNIDO 2013).